Traditional incinerators have been used in the United States since the early 19th century and were originally constructed to convert waste materials into ash, flue gas, and waste heat by combusting the organic substances within a loaded waste material. These initial forms of incineration released harmful gaseous and particulate directly into the environment without prior “scrubbing.” When emitted into the air, fine particulates, heavy metals, trace dioxin and acid gas were later inhaled by third-parties.
Today waste incineration and the inability to properly handle ash and heavy metals remain dangerous to the environment and toxic to humans. In response to this hazard, lobbying has led to a new generation of cleaner waste-to-energy innovation. Included within these innovations are systems which incorporate thermal and non-thermal applications including advanced incineration, gasification, and pyrolysis which are able to convert the gaseous effluents into electrical energy.
Though much of this technology has enjoyed vast improvements which are now regulated by government standards, many of these new systems and devices remain bulky and inefficient.
Though there are several devices and systems for waste-to-energy recovery such as U.S. Pat. App. No. 2011/0036280 to Toase et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,554 to Urich; and European Patent No. 0776,962 to Fujimura et. al., there is not a single reference which discloses a highly portable and readily assemblable waste-to-energy apparatus which may be set up using an integrated rail system by a single operator and coupled with a plurality of technologies to create multiple energy sources.